"All the voyagers who have ventured fearful into the vast unknown spaces of our planet have a patron saint: Harvard historian Joyce Chaplin. Did she, like them, really appreciate what she was getting into when she set sail to track the adventures of the circumnavigators by sail, steam, and spaceship over 500 years? The risks for Chaplin, as the first complete chronicler of the globe-circlers, were that she would either get becalmed in a Pacific ocean of research, or lose the narrative thread in unloading all her plunder. The reader may safely embark with eager anticipation. She can be welcomed home with garlands. Her book is a treasure of thrilling stories, replete with insights into the advances of science, technology and medicine, and it's reflective, too. The planet we encircle and embrace is our only home in the cosmos."—Harold Evans